Maybe not the cheapest option, but god is it faster than the raspberry pi.

Just installed Debian on it and everything flies along nicely. Running from a sata HD. Bluetooth and WiFi maybe not needed though, currently using 128meg out of 2 GB.

Love it ...

Rich

2 years, 4 months ago

Cold.

The odroid u3 based on quadcore Samsung ARM chip is far superior, even with the high shipping fees from Korea + customs charge, far better value than this piece of junk. Radxa Rock Pro has a quad Cortex A9, you can import them from a Germany supplier for a little over €100 shipped to the UK.

A used Intel Atom netbook can be purchased on ebay for less than £85, a better option for most, easily run rings around these ARM devices bar 1080p hardware video playback acceleration which Atom Netbook lacks.

The Raspberry Pi is cheap, far better dev support than any of those ARM platforms, recently broke 3 million units sold and counting!

Agree with above post, anything more than £40-£50 (quad ARM or not) I suggest buying a used Atom Netbook instead that consumes 10-15W max with the display on.

2 years, 4 months ago

Adrian7

Pi should have moved to such a spec for some time (DC ARM, perhaps QC) - but I'd agree the price of this is too high. 1GB memory would suffice, Gbit LAN too much, does it need WiFi + BT?

Using a Broadcom SoC would've ensured easier porting/compatibility with Pi OS, AllWinner is not known for stable ports - at least the GPU is ARM Mali so pretty standard...

Gigabit ethernet/wifi and bluetooth along with a SATA port are all welcome additions as it means the board can be used for so many more purposes. I'm assuming the 2Gb RAM, wifi and bluetooth are mainly aimed at people who want to run Android on it.

2 years, 4 months ago

Cattle

Lost it's Pi roots, this is not what David Braben intended.

He intended for people to use the Pi as a starting point to get people interested in tinkering with computers again. In that I'd say other companies building on the Pi and expanding it fits perfectly into what he intended.

The original Pi (and further revisions) will always be there at the entry level but for people who want a bit more power for their projects boards like the Cubie/BananaPi and the like are certainly welcome additions.

I agree that the Cubie could do with being cheaper but this 'deal' is the cheapest I've seen it so far.